Which printer to buy?

Many of you are looking for a little guidance on which inkjet printer to buy. We have been selling ink cartridges for well over ten years to domestic and commercial customers throughout the UK and Europe and over that time we have picked up a little insight. We sell the manufacturers own brand of cartridge at the best prices you will find as well as the cheaper alternatives.
The most important thing to remember when buying a printer is - what is it going to cost me? No not the price of the printer the cost of the replacement ink, or if you like the what is it going to cost you per page to use. Quite often the cheapest printer to buy is the most expensive to actually use, sometimes one set of replacement inks cost more than you paid for the printer.

There are two main types of inkjet printer.

Multiple cartridge machines mostly take 4 cartridges one black and one each of cyan, magenta and yellow but can take many more.

1. The big advantage of this design over printers that take two cartridges (one black and one colour) is that in the two cartridge machines the colour cartridge is split into three compartments (cyan, magenta, yellow) and when one of these compartments is empty due to you printing a lot of one colour (lots of blue sky maybe) you have to throw away the other two compartments ink and all. If one ink has run out the printer will not print.

2. The cheaper alternative ink cartridges for these machines are brand new copies of the genuine article often for a fraction of the price.

3.The main disadvantage is that these machines have a print head inside the printer that clogs with dried ink over time. This happens with genuine ink as well as the cheaper alternative version. The only way to prevent this happening is to do regular print head cleaning from new, do not wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will probably shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over. Remember to clean your print head!

Cartridge with Print head machines.

1. The advantage is that every time you replace your cartridge you replace the print head in your printer, theoretically leading to better print quality and longer printer life.

2. The disadvantage is that most of these are two cartridge machines - see above.

3. The cost of the replacement ink is high, as they include the print head.

4. The brand new compatible inks are not available for these machines. The alternative inks are genuine cartridges that are remanufactured. You can have your cartridge refilled in a shop literally with a syringe and needle, the other option is the professionally remanufactured version. These are recycled cartridges which are refilled in a factory. I will post a description of the process separately. Remanufactured cartridges are more expensive than brand new alternatives and a have a higher failure rate.

5. When a set of genuine replacement inks costs nearly as much as a new printer maybe extended printer life is not an advantage!

I will post a breakdown of the various printer brands so you can make an informed decision!